Apple TV+’s anthology series Roar features eight stand-alone episodes, each telling a powerful story of women facing adversity and responding in unique ways. Alison Brie, Cynthia Erivo, Merritt Wever, Fivel Stewart, Nicole Kidman, Issa Rae, and Betty Gilpin star in their own episodes based on short stories by acclaimed writer Cecelia Ahern, with season one addressing relatable issues in surreal ways.
Sometimes heart-wrenching, often humorous, Apple TV+’s Roar’s eight thought-provoking episodes are meant to spark conversations. The series was created by co-showrunners Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch (GLOW, Orange is the New Black) and is set to premiere on Friday, April 15, 2022.
Flahive said the ability to tell eight incredibly different stand-alone episodes, each with a beginning, middle, and end, made Roar the most exciting project she’s ever been involved in.
“It was also one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do, just because they were all so incredibly different and required all these different things. We didn’t have a standing set. Every world had to be created from the studs and, luckily, we had a team both in front of and behind the camera – a team of incredibly genius collaborators – which made it actually possible,” explained Flahive during a virtual press conference in support of the series’ debut.
Flahive added: “I think the fact that they are all so different but there is a shared experience of a woman at the center – an ordinary woman being hit with some extraordinary circumstances – is part of the connective tissues for me, in terms of the show.”
Screen Actors Guild winner Alison Brie (Mad Men, GLOW) stars in the “The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder” episode which is described as a comic feminist twist on the male detective genre. (Brie’s episode is one of two not based on a Cecelia Ahern short story.) Brie loved the fact Roar is a mix of genres and also shifts in tone – even within a single episode.
“Each episode explores a different genre, but also within each episode there are many facets to the tone. There’s a bit of dark humor and drama and horror and intrigue that’s also filled with so much insight and commentary on the female experience,” said Brie during the Zoom press conference. “It truly was unlike anything I had ever read before or seen before, I think. That was part of the joy of working on it was sort of figuring it out as we went along which was really fun.”
Two-time Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo (Harriet) plays a wife and mother attempting to balance her home life and career in Roar’s “The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin” episode. Erivo described each episode of the anthology series as showcasing just a snapshot of each of these women’s lives, with her character attempting to be at the top of her game and feeling guilty about not being able to be everything to everyone all the time.
“I think that the way it’s been handled, the fact that somehow we managed to sneak the humor into all of them somewhere really feels great,” explained Erivo. “I’ve never done anything like that. I don’t think I’ve done any dark comedy before, and I don’t think anyone has given me the chance to sort of stretch those chops a little bit.
I liked that it was a challenge for me. I liked having to be on set with bite marks on my skin and pretend that it’s oozing and I can see the whole thing falling apart. Like, all of the threads pulling at the extremes of it all and trying to figure out how to make it as grounded as possible knowing that we’re in this ludicrous situation was, for me, kind of awesome. I had never read a script like it before. I had never been able to combine all these different aspects of a person together in one character. So, I think that the fact that you get eight different versions of that is really kind of awesome.”
Fivel Stewart (Atypical) stars in “The Girl Who Loved Horses” episode, the only episode with “girl” rather than “woman” in the title. (Stewart’s episode wasn’t based on an Ahern short story.) “The Girl Who Loved Horses” is a Western revenge tale with Stewart as a teenager out to avenge her father’s murder.
Stewart hopes her episode will encourage young women to listen to themselves. “I know that for my episode Jane knew exactly where she needed to go and what she needed to do in order for her to feel satisfied in her life. Something that she loved was taken away from her,” said Stewart. “I think one of my favorite things about my episode specifically […]was that she didn’t just act out emotionally, she really internalized what happened and just did the thing.
I hope that young girls…I mean, I know that I’m the youngest one in the anthology…so I hope that young girls see my episode and just feel really driven to listen to their intuition.”
Two-time Emmy Award winner Merritt Wever (Godless, Nurse Jackie) stars opposite a waterfowl in “The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck,” an episode that finds Wever’s character evaluating her self-worth.
Asked to describe her approach to the character, Wever replied, “It wasn’t any different than I think it always is for me. I just go to the material and that’s where I begin. I start digging in and I try and find my way. But I think one of the most striking features of this whole experience for me was coming back to my first job, pretty much, post-Covid. I hadn’t been working so it was my first time back on a set acting and also in a community or in a group of people sharing a purpose. At times it was a big deal and it was disorienting, and then really quickly it wasn’t. It was just back to the grind.
I often felt a bit like Gumby when I was acting. Like, ‘This is my job. How do you do it?’ But it also felt really beautiful sometimes to find myself shoulder to shoulder with somebody in the trenches with a common goal again. That felt very meaningful to me. I think that’s always going to be like a sheen that’s over this whole experience. Even if you can’t see it from the inside, that’s certainly part of what the experience was for me. It’s something I carried with me when we were shooting, and it’s something I carry with me now when I look back on it – the first one back.”
Watch the interview video for more with Alison Brie, Cynthia Erivo, Merritt Wever, Fivel Stewart, and Liz Flahive. All eight episodes of Roar premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, April 15, 2022.
This post was last modified on March 6, 2023 4:23 pm